In May 1967, the State of Israel stood alone and terrified.
Nasser’s Egypt massed troops in the Sinai. Syria threatened annihilation from the north. Jordan loomed to the east. The Straits of Tiran were closed. Arab radio stations blared promises of destruction. Graves were dug in public parks in Tel Aviv in anticipation of mass casualties. Holocaust survivors, barely two decades removed from Europe’s crematoria, wondered whether Jewish history was about to repeat itself.
Two million Jews faced a hostile Arab world of nearly 100 million.
It is difficult today to convey the sheer dread of those weeks. Israel was tiny, fragile, and surrounded. The memory of Auschwitz was still fresh enough that many genuinely feared a second genocide. The phrase “throwing the Jews into the sea” was not rhetoric to Israelis in 1967; it was a plausible threat.
And then history turned.
Through astonishing military brilliance, unimaginable courage, and what many – secular and religious alike – experienced as the palpable hand of God, Israel achieved one of the most extraordinary victories in modern history. In six days, the Jewish state defeated the armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. The Israel Air Force destroyed enemy air forces on the ground. Israeli soldiers fought street by street, hill by hill, often outnumbered and outgunned.
And then came Jerusalem.
For the first time in over 2,500 years, since the destruction of the First Temple, the Jewish people once again held sovereignty over the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.
The words of General Mordechai “Motta” Gur electrified the Jewish world: “Har Habayit beyadeinu.” The Temple Mount is in our hands.
Those words were not political. They were civilizational.
To understand the emotional force of that moment, younger Jews need to remember what came before it.
Between 1948 and 1967, when the Old City was under Jordanian control, Jews were forbidden to visit the Western Wall. Jewish cemeteries on the Mount of Olives were desecrated. Synagogues in the Jewish Quarter were destroyed. The holiest sites of Judaism were closed to Jews altogether.
Even before 1948, under the British Mandate, Jewish access to the Western Wall came with humiliation and restrictions. Jews were forbidden from bringing chairs or mechitzot (partitions). Blowing the shofar at the Western Wall became an act of defiance for which Jews could be arrested. We were tolerated at our holiest sites, but never sovereign there.
And then suddenly, in June 1967, Jewish soldiers stood weeping at the Wall.
The entire Jewish world stood with them.
Right-wing, left-wing, secular, religious – it did not matter.
There was pride. There was awe. There was unity.
I remember it personally.
I was eight years old at the end of June 1967, attending the end-of-year garden party at my Jewish school in Britain. This was not a particularly Zionist institution. At best, it was neutral on Israel. Yet suddenly, spontaneously, people began singing “Hatikvah.”
No one organized it. No one planned it. It simply burst forth.
The adults sang. The children sang. People cried.
Something profound had happened to the Jewish people. We no longer felt powerless. We no longer felt like guests in history.
Yet even in the moment of triumph, the seeds of hesitation were already visible. Almost immediately after the liberation of Jerusalem, Israel’s leadership shrank back from the full implications of what had occurred. Despite the electrifying declaration of “Har Habayit beyadeinu,” the Temple Mount was effectively handed back to the Waqf administration.
Some will say the decision was politically prudent at the time. Perhaps it avoided an immediate religious war. Historians will continue to debate it, but I deplore it.
In any event, symbolically, it revealed something profound: even at the very height of Jewish confidence and military victory, we were already uncomfortable with fully embracing the meaning of our return home. Even in our greatest hour, there lingered a hesitation to assert, unapologetically and unequivocally, that this was ours.
And now?
The Reality Today
Fast forward 59 years.
Apart from some in the religious Zionist world, Jerusalem Day barely exists.
In many Jewish communities, it passes unnoticed. In others, it is treated almost as an embarrassment. The liberation of Jerusalem is no longer celebrated as a miracle or even as a historic achievement. Instead, it is spoken about apologetically, if at all.
Jerusalem has become reframed through the language of colonialism, imperialism, occupation, and oppression. The Jewish return to our holiest city is discussed as though it were morally suspect.
And so, we must ask ourselves a painful question: How did we lose our way so quickly?
How did the Jewish people go from rejoicing at the reunification of Jerusalem to feeling uncomfortable defending our presence there?
How did a nation that once stood proudly in the aftermath of existential victory become so hesitant, so apologetic, so uncertain of its own story?
Because this is not merely about politics; it is about identity.
Somewhere along the way, many Jews stopped believing deeply enough in our own narrative. We stopped speaking with confidence about Jewish indigeneity in the Land of Israel. We stopped asserting the obvious truth that Jerusalem is not a colonial outpost, but the beating heart of Jewish civilization.
Long before there was Islam, before Christianity, before the Arab conquest, Jews were praying in Jerusalem, ruling in Jerusalem, writing poetry about Jerusalem, and dying for Jerusalem.
Our connection to this land is not a 20th-century invention. It is the foundation stone of Jewish memory itself.
Three times a day, Jews pray toward Jerusalem.
At every wedding, we break a glass for Jerusalem.
At every Passover seder: “Next year in Jerusalem.”
For two millennia, scattered and persecuted across continents, Jews never relinquished the dream of return.
And when that return finally came, after centuries of exile and after the ashes of Europe, it was treated by Jews across the world as the fulfillment of history itself.
Yet today, too many Jews seem desperate for the approval of those who will never grant it.
Even after October 7, after Jewish families were butchered, women were violated, children burned, and civilians kidnapped, there were Jews who rushed not to defend Israel but to condemn it. There are Jewish public figures openly hostile to the very idea of Jewish national self-determination. One thinks, for example, of Zack Polanski and others like him, who seem more comfortable accusing their own people than standing beside them.
This phenomenon would have been incomprehensible in June 1967.
Back then, Jews understood something simple: if we do not defend ourselves, nobody else will.
That lesson was written in Jewish blood across centuries.
None of this means Israel is perfect. No country is. Israelis argue endlessly – about governments, policies, religion, territory, morality. That is part of Jewish culture. But there is a vast difference between self-criticism and self-erasure.
The problem today is not merely political disagreement. It is the collapse of Jewish confidence. We have become frightened of our own story.
Frightened to say that we belong here.
Frightened to say that Jewish sovereignty in Jerusalem is just.
Frightened to say that the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers in the land where Jewish history began.
Jerusalem Day should remind us not only of military victory, but of moral clarity.
The Jewish people returned home.
Not to conquer a foreign land, but to reclaim the center of our ancient civilization.
Wake up, Jewish people.
Stop apologizing for existing.
Stop outsourcing your morality to those who neither understand nor respect your history.
Be proud of what Israel achieved in 1967.
Be proud that, against impossible odds, the Jewish people survived and prevailed.
Be proud that Jerusalem is once again in Jewish hands.
Because the truth is simple: we belong here.
And we are not going anywhere.
The writer is a rabbi and physician. He writes and teaches on Jewish ethics, leadership, and resilience. His work appears on rabbidrjonathanlieberman.substack.com and youtube.com/@rabbidrjonathanlieberman